


The Gods' Punishment

by stargatefan_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2018-12-17 17:00:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11855880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargatefan_archivist/pseuds/stargatefan_archivist
Summary: Arrom (Daniel) searches for himself and the place where he belongs.





	The Gods' Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Yuma, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Stargatefan.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Stargatefan.com). To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [StargateFan Archive Collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/StargateFan_Archive_Collection).

The villagers called him “Arrom, the Naked One” because that’s how they had found him, naked and shivering on the hard ground. It wasn’t even a name, just a description, like calling a baby “Baby.” It proved more than fitting, however, when they discovered his mind was just as naked as his body had been. He couldn’t tell them who he was or where he was from or how he arrived in their field. He was Arrom. He accepted the description because he had nothing else.

Some things about the village seemed familiar. The robes they gave him to wear. The communal food. The covert glances of women who offered drink before sidling away. At one point during his first meal with the village elders, he caught a flash of dark hair and laughing beauty, but when he turned to see the girl more fully, he realized she was just another villager, a stranger like all the others. He felt bereft and didn’t know why.

He watched and listened, saying nothing unless spoken to directly, while the elders debated the wisdom of allowing him to remain among them. They worried he had committed some terrible crime and the gods had punished him by removing his memory. He feared they were right. An undefined guilt, a sense of something left unfinished and horribly wrong, made his heart clench.

Perhaps because he was not among those arguing or perhaps because he was seated closest to the eldest man, he was the first to see Shamda’s eyes bulge and his fingers scrabble frantically at his throat. Certainly he was the first to act. He pulled the elder upright, grabbed him from behind, and plunged his fisted hands upward. He was rewarded with a small popping sound as a date launched itself from Shamda’s mouth, followed by the welcome sound of Shamda’s gasping.

_Thank you, Heimlich_ , he thought fleetingly, before he became aware of the angry crowd that surrounded him, their eating knives pricking his skin. He drew his arms carefully away from Shamda and held them aloft, level with his chest.

“No, no!” Shamda cried, waving the other elders back as he struggled to recover his breath.

Arrom waited motionless while Shamda explained how the newcomer’s actions had loosed the date caught in his throat. Knives were lowered, and the elders grudgingly agreed with Shamda’s declaration that Arrom had earned the right to stay.

For the first moon, he tried to make the village his home. The villagers were kind but distant. The tasks they gave him were simple and unimportant. With the exception of Shamda, who relished a new audience for his many stories, no one sought Arrom out or invited his confidence. They didn’t want his questions or his interest into their lives. Each day increased the certainty within him that he did not belong. The village was an ill fit that chafed at him like a too-small robe.

Restless, he began wandering farther and farther from the village. He didn’t know what he was seeking. Shamda had smiled indulgently when Arrom made that confession one night.

“You are like the mouse who searches for the proper home. You remember that story?” When Arrom insisted that he remembered, Shamda shrugged and for once, did not retell it. “So, like the mouse, when you find what you seek, you will know it, and you will leave us.”

“I don’t want to leave.” The mere thought was staggering. He could scarcely breathe for considering it.

“Then don’t. Find your place here in the village.”

But when morning came, Arrom couldn’t stay. He needed to explore. He felt stifled by the village and driven to discover the world outside it. This curiosity, this passion to reach for more, was comfortable. He recognized it for a long-ago friend and realized it was the first time he had identified something of his life before he had become Arrom.

The ruins far from the village brought him a sense of peace. He lost himself in their allure, tracing spidery lines of a forgotten language and again feeling the tug of familiarity. When he unearthed a piece of broken pottery, he had a sense of rightness, a sort of belonging, as if the ruins too were a long-ago friend.

On other days, he couldn’t stand the ruins and their reminder that everyone had a past, when he did not. On those days he wandered again, and loneliness clung to him with a crushing weight. Something was missing. He should be sharing this walk with friends, but none of the villagers would accompany him.

His ramblings eventually led him to the stone circle. He gazed at it for several minutes, awestruck at its size and its peculiar presence in the middle of an empty field. He brushed his hand over the glyphs that covered the pedestal beside the circle, and when he saw the same glyphs on the circle itself, he wondered at their purpose.

It was then he had the first vision.

The vision filled his mind completely. Instead of a stone circle in a field, he saw a similar circle inside a metal room. It was blurry and distant as if he viewed it from far away through a cloudy partition. A woman’s voice spoke near his ear, “That’s your Stargate.”

As suddenly as the vision had come, it left. He was on his knees, breathing hard. His heart hammered against the walls of his chest. His head hurt. He waited for his body to calm and then staggered to his feet, using the pedestal for support. Finally he took a deep breath and lifted his gaze to the circle.

Nothing happened.

Disappointment engulfed him. He had thought the vision meant his memory was returning.

He stayed at the circle until the approach of night forced him to return to the village. No more visions came. He had studied the glyphs on both the circle and the pedestal, but the meaning behind their patterns eluded him. If the circle had a purpose, he hadn’t been able to determine it. Stargate was just an empty word, a wild hope.

His frustration grew as the evening progressed. He stirred a finger through his rice, unable to eat. Beside him, Shamda leaned closer. “The food is not to your liking?”

Arrom sighed and set down the bowl. “I’m just not hungry.”

Shamda nodded. “Uneasy in mind, uneasy in stomach. Like the man--”

“Whose dog was missing. I know.” Usually he didn’t mind Shamda’s stories or his tendency to repeat them, but tonight, the circle dominated his thoughts. “Shamda, have you ever seen the stone circle that stands upright?”

“Of course. The chappa’ai.”

“Chappa’ai.” The word rolled easily off Arrom’s tongue but sparked no recognition in his mind.

“It is said that travelers would come through the chappa’ai and trade with us or wish to settle near us. Sometimes men called Jaffa with marks on their foreheads would come and steal from us.” Shamda shrugged. “We have never seen these travelers or these Jaffa. Maybe they are only stories. But within every story is a seed of truth.”

“Where were the travelers from?” he asked, but what he meant was, Am I from that place?

Shamda patted his knee. “I don’t know, Arrom.”

Again and again, Arrom returned to the chappa’ai. His Stargate. He wanted to recapture that one moment, the clarity brought by a single vision. He tried to remember, tried to imagine who he might have been. He saw nothing.

Days later, when he had abandoned hope and stopped trying, he began to experience more visions, and after that, they came regularly, sometimes several in one day. They were never as strong or intense as the first one and were always accompanied by nausea, dizziness, or headaches. Arrom willingly endured the discomfort. He thought he would pay any price to know who he was. But the visions he saw now were mere wisps, like ghosts that drifted out of his mind before he knew they were there. The harder he tried to remember, the more insubstantial the memories became, leaving him with nothing but feeling.

He had no context for the feelings. With little warning, he would be floundering in some inexplicable emotion. The worst and strongest was the sense of failure. Because he had tried to do something and failed, something he loved was gone. The despair of that thought made him edgy and ill-tempered. He began leaving the village earlier in the mornings and returning later in the evenings. The village was too small. Sometimes, his body felt too small.

One night Shamda was waiting in Arrom’s tent. “Are you still searching?” the elder asked. “Or are you running?”

“Both, I think.” Arrom hugged his arms over his chest. “I just want to know what happened to me.”

“Do you?”

Arrom looked away. Sometimes Shamda saw right through him.

“How can you find the answers if you fear them, Arrom?”

“Are there answers?”

“As long as there are questions, there will be answers.”

Arrom sighed. “I’m tired of asking.”

“Then stop. The moral of the wolf with the mangy coat is that the troubles of the present are enough. Do not borrow more from the past. Be content with who you are, Arrom.”

That night, Arrom dreamed of a woman with short, blonde hair. They were standing in a cave, and he saw glyphs from the Stargate carved into the rock walls. The woman grinned at him and said, “I knew I’d like you!”

When the dream woke him, gasping for air and shivering, he stared at the ceiling of his tent and thought, _I don’t want to be Arrom for the rest of my life._ He had to keep looking for answers. Past or present, Arrom or someone else, he knew it was his tenacity in asking questions that defined him.

The next morning, as he stepped off the forest track that led to his Stargate, he met strangers. When he saw them, his heart thudded. Were they travelers who had come through the chappa’ai? Would they tell him of other places, of a place he might belong?

The four men stared at him as if he were an apparition. Perhaps they didn’t know the village was inhabited.

“Greetings,” he said softly. They had lowered their weapons, but he didn’t want to startle them.

One of the men swallowed and stepped closer. “Doctor Jackson? Does Colonel O’Neill know you’re here?”

Arrom lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know these people you speak of. Perhaps they’re at the village. Would you like me to take you there?”

“Um, yeah, sure. That’d be great.” He signaled to the other men, who fell in step behind Arrom and the first man. “Um, do you know who I am?”

“You’re a traveler.”

“Um, right. Pierce is my name.” He paused and glanced at Arrom expectantly. Arrom shook his head. He had nothing to give this man.

“Did you come through the chappa’ai?” Arrom asked.

“The chappa--? Oh, the Stargate! Yes. Yes, we did. How did—how did you get here?”

“I don’t know. I was just here.” Arrom’s skin prickled. Stargate. This stranger knew Arrom’s secret name for the chappa’ai. “This place you come from, what’s it called? What’s it like?”

“Look, Doc—um, I think you’ll have to ask Colonel O’Neill your questions.”

“Is he one of your elders?”

The men behind them snickered. Pierce smoothed a smirk off his own face and then tossed a look over his shoulder, silencing the others’ laughter.

“He’s our leader, so yeah, I guess you could call him an elder.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Pierce was making Arrom feel skittish. He kept peeking at Arrom as if he thought Arrom might flee like a frightened rabbit. Arrom was glad when they reached the village.

Arrom could hear Shamda reciting the moral to one of his stories. “Enemies’ promises were made to be broken.”

Another voice replied, “And yet, honesty is the best policy.”

Arrom’s head roared, blocking the sound of the continuing conversation. He knew that voice, remembered that tongue-in-cheek humor. The shock of recognition stunned him. He halted where he was, trembling. Pierce and two of the other men strode into the lead, and he sensed their eagerness, as if they anticipated a reward for being led to the village. Then the voice itself was pulling Arrom forward.

“It has to do with flocking…and togetherness…and…to be honest, I’m not that familiar with the particulars myself. The point is, we’re not your enemy. Give us a chance to prove it.”

“Colonel!” Pierce called. “We found something you might want to see.”

Every nerve in Arrom’s body was vibrating. He was rigid with tension. He followed Pierce and the other men into the village, but he was barely aware of their presence. His gaze was drawn to the man, the one called Colonel, the owner of the voice.

“Daniel?”

The colonel was staring as if he didn’t dare blink or Arrom would disappear. In a flash of memory, Arrom saw that same look of surprised disbelief. It shifted into a huge grin. Then arms enveloped him, hands ruffled his hair, and a voice made gruff by unshed tears— _the_ voice—whispered, “Spacemonkey.”

“Arrom,” Shamda said.

“Arrom?”

When he heard the skepticism in the colonel’s voice, Arrom thought, _I’m not Arrom. Not to this man. He knows me. He knows who I really am._

As the others explained why they called him “the Naked One,” Arrom studied the colonel, trying to recognize more than the voice. He remembered nothing. _I’m still naked_ , Arrom thought with despair. _This man knows me, but I don’t know him. Only his voice is familiar._

“Seems he doesn’t remember who he is,” Pierce said.

_Why? Why don’t I remember? Who am I? Who are you?_

The woman at the colonel’s left moved into Arrom’s line of vision. Arrom almost stopped breathing. He felt dizzy. His head throbbed. It was the blonde woman from his dream.

“Daniel?” She smiled. Her hand hovered.

Arrom knew she was reaching to touch him and knew just as certainly that he couldn’t hold himself together any longer. He was crawling out of his skin, drowning in a sea of emotion. If she touched him, he would shatter.

“It’s okay. It’s me, Sa--”

He blocked her hand. She froze. The tall, dark man behind her frowned.

“Do you not recognize us, DanielJackson?”

He had to get away. He needed to breathe. He gave a slight shake of his head, and even that movement was enough to send spikes of pain through his body. He managed one breath.

“I’m sorry.”

He turned and walked through the throng of gathered villagers and toward his tent. He wanted to run, but every muscle in his body suddenly ached.

Behind him, the colonel’s voice tried to tug him back. “Not even me?”

Arrom bit the inside of his lip and kept walking. Nausea threatened. He reached the safety of his tent, sank to a low chair, and rested his head in his hands. It was dark in the tent, matching his mood. He heard a noise by the tent entrance. He lifted his head and groaned quietly. Turning his head aside, he raised a hand and tried to ward the colonel away.

“Please leave me alone.” In his mind, he heard Shamda reproaching him, _How can you find the answers if you fear them?_

The colonel knew him. He heard the panic in Arrom’s plea and knew to ignore it, to push Arrom beyond it. It was both frightening and humbling that this man knew Arrom so well.

“I’m Jack O’Neill. And barring some freakish similarity, you are Doctor Daniel Jackson.” O’Neill settled into the chair across from him.

Arrom’s mouth was dry. He had a name, a real name. If he could just accept it, if he could work past the terror that had numbed him… He wanted O’Neill to understand why this was so difficult for him.

“This tent is all I know. These people, they’re all I know.” And still he was the stranger, the odd one. The village was just a place to live, never a home. “I don’t remember anything. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to remember who I was before. Sometimes I think it’s right there, floating in front of me, and all I have to do is reach out and grab it. I try…and it’s gone.”

He stole a glance at O’Neill. The man’s eyes were patient, understanding him in a way that Shamda and the villagers never had.

“You were a member of my team, SG-1. You’re a friend of mine.” Truths simply spoken. “Last year, you died.” Something flicked in O’Neill’s eyes and was gone.

“I’m dead?”

O’Neill took a moment to consider that, his face wooden. “Obviously not. You just sort of died.” Arrom quirked an eyebrow as O’Neill paused, searching for an explanation that made sense. “Actually, you…ascended to a higher plane of existence. Last time I saw you, you were helping us fight Anubis.”

“Anubis?” Failure, dread, guilt… The feelings washed over him. While O’Neill went on to describe Anubis, Arrom struggled to breathe evenly.

O’Neill paused and looked at Arrom. “Actually, I can imagine how this might sound a bit unusual.”

“A bit?” He choked back the impulse to laugh hysterically. Nothing made sense. Nothing was familiar. Why? The question wrenched itself from him. “Why am I here?”

“Hey, why are any of us here?”

Arrom looked away, the desire to cry almost as overwhelming as the urge to laugh. Visions triggered by O’Neill’s voice flashed through Arrom’s mind, too quickly for him to catch. Emotions surged and waned, tossing him like flotsam upon the waves.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” O’Neill continued, and in the gentled tone, Arrom heard his regret for the earlier flippancy, “but you’ve gotta trust me. You are Daniel Jackson. Think of it this way. Out of all the planets in the galaxy, why this one, if not for us to find you?”

Arrom met O’Neill’s gaze again. “So you’re saying a higher power had a hand in putting me here?”

_Did the gods punish me? What crime did I commit? How can I make it right if I don’t know what it was? Why take my memory? Why?_

O’Neill shrugged, not hearing Arrom’s silent screams. “I don’t know. That was generally your department.”

He leaned forward. He stopped short of touching, his fingers barely brushing Arrom’s shoulder. His voice was low and intent.

“You gotta trust us, Daniel.”

O’Neill lingered for another minute. Waiting. Waiting for Daniel, who wasn’t here. There was only Arrom, naked Arrom, stripped of all identity except the one given to him by well-meaning villagers. The gods had punished him. Then they brought the voice of O’Neill and the image of a blonde woman into his mind, taunting him with elusive memories, torturing him with uncertainty.

O’Neill sighed and stood. _Don’t leave_ , Arrom thought, but he said nothing as O’Neill ducked out of the tent. Alone at last, Arrom let the tears come. They burned him raw.

The storm of tears was brief. He dried his face and felt empty. The darkness of his tent mocked him. While he was lighting candles, he sensed the nearness of another person. He turned his head slightly and saw the blonde woman hesitating by the entrance.

“Can I come in?”

The refusal trembled on his lips. He heard Shamda’s admonishing voice. _Are you running?_ He shrugged away both the refusal and the voice. What did it matter?

“Sure.”

She sat next to him, and it felt right that she should be at his side, supportive and not pushing, while it had been right for O’Neill to sit across from him, demanding eye contact, expecting answers. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it until now.

“So…” She trailed off, letting him decide the direction of their conversation. If he said nothing, she would work with that. O’Neill would have pestered.

The revelations struck Arrom. It seemed he knew some things intuitively, even if he had no real memory of them.

They went through the introductions. Arrom became flustered trying to figure out why the name Jim was as familiar to him as Jack, and Sam took advantage of the moment.

“I guess what I don’t understand is why you aren’t dying to know all about who you are.”

“I am…” Guilt and failure pressed in. “And I’m not.”

“See, it’s the not part--”

He broke in, “What if I don’t like who I was?” Frustration bled into his voice. He kept his eyes focused on the far tent wall, avoiding her gaze. “What if I don’t want to be that person? What if I don’t have it in me to make up for something I’ve done wrong?”

He glanced at her and saw startled comprehension. She knew. She knew what he had done.

“I have to admit, that never occurred to me.”

He looked away, not wanting to see her condemnation. She leaned closer. He could smell her, a whiff of herbal shampoo.

“Look, we all thought we’d lost you at one point. It was one of the hardest things I have ever been through.” She caught her breath. He heard pain in the way her voice cracked, in the way she stifled a sob. “You were…you are…brilliant.”

He ducked his head. He didn’t feel brilliant.

“One of the most caring, passionate…you’re the type of person who would give his own life for someone he doesn’t even know.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.” He flipped a tiny smile in her direction, appreciating her words, even if he didn’t believe them. He wished he could be this person she admired so much.

He kept forgetting how well these people knew him. Knew Daniel. Sam looked at him as if she sensed his doubt and became even more fervent.

“If you had one fault, it was that you wanted to save people so badly, you wanted to help people so much, that it tore you apart when you couldn’t make a difference.”

_That’s why the gods punished me. I tried to make a difference._ The thought came like his first vision, shocking in its intensity. The sense of injustice staggered him. He had been punished for trying to help. Why, why, why? It wasn’t fair! He had done nothing wrong.

She was watching him. He fought to make his voice sound normal. “That actually sounds kind of hard to live up to.”

“All I know is that if I were you, I would definitely want to get to know me…you.” She looked disconcerted, trying to deal with the pronouns.

The need to help her, to put her at ease, was instinctual. He smiled. “I get it.”

She concentrated her gaze on him, and it was as palpable as a touch. “Come back with us. Let us show you who you are instead of just telling you.”

They wanted him to ask questions. They wanted him to discover the truth for himself instead of accepting what they gave him. That’s what he had been seeking. A place where he was free to ask questions and satisfy his curiosity, not only about himself, but also about others.

He heard himself say, “I’ll think about it,” but he knew the decision was already made.

Sam stood to leave. Memory flashed, and he heard her tear-choked voice, “I don’t know why we wait to tell people how we really feel. I guess I hoped that you always knew.” He called her name.

“Was there ever anything…between us?”

She stumbled for a moment, not expecting the question, but in the end, she answered, “We—we were really, really good friends.”

Their gazes locked, and Arrom recognized another truth. They respected him enough to give him the choice, go or stay, but they already knew his choice because they knew him. They understood who he was. They would remember for him until he could remember for himself. Whatever happened in his past that had caused his memory loss, they wouldn’t leave him.

A few minutes later, after Sam had left, Shamda entered the tent. Arrom stopped packing his bag and looked at the elder.

“Like the mouse, you have found what you were seeking,” Shamda said.

“Yes.”

“And you have stopped running from the answers.”

“Yes.”

“So now you will leave us.”

“Yes.” He paused as he realized the prospect that had once frightened him now brought a sense of excitement. “But I will remember your kindness for taking in a stranger.”

“A stranger is only a friend in disguise.” Shamda grinned. “You’d do well to remember the stories.”

Arrom smiled in return. “I will.”

Shamda nodded his satisfied approval and left. Arrom looked one last time at the only place he had ever known. There was little to pack, nothing he owned that was not charity and obligation toward a stranger. He stepped outside the tent in time to hear the deep voice of the dark man.

“What of DanielJackson?”

Daniel lifted the bag to his shoulder and strode forward. “He’s going home.”

They all looked at him. None of them seemed surprised, but they gave him a moment to consider, to be certain of his path.

He nodded resolutely. He belonged with these people. He had a name and a home. For now, that was enough. Later, he would ask questions.


End file.
